Education of The Forester and Specialization

Abstract

<p>It is entirely appropriate and highly opportune that the “Ames Forester” should devote this issue to the subject of forestry education. In nearly every forest region of the United States professional forestry is on the march. The owners of timberlands are becoming increasingly interested in managing their lands for the production of timber crops because there are no longer any new, large frontiers of virgin timber to which they may go after their present holdings are depleted. The professional foresters employed by these timberland owners are daily being challenged to provide technical information on timber growing that would have been considered as extremely theoretical even a decade ago. As a consequence, the owners of timberland may be said to have transferred their interest from geographical frontiers to technological and scientific frontiers. These challenges to professional foresters are basically a challenge to forestry education. Confronting every forestry faculty in the United States is the very direct and practical question: "Are the forestry students now in college being offered the sort of training which will equip them to meet the even more difficult challenges that will prevail ten and fifteen years hence when they will have reached professional maturity?''</p>